1. Field of the Invention
The disclosure relates to a method and a system for a node to join a wireless ad-hoc network.
2. Description of Related Art
Along with the development of wireless network technologies, wireless network has been broadly deployed. For example, the wireless devices in a company or a family can form a personal area network (PAN) so that data can be transmitted within the company or the family via the PAN. Taking the ZigBee standard as an example, 26 wireless channels are specified in this standard, and nodes on each of the channels can coexist without interfering each other. Besides, such a low-power wireless network equipment (i.e., a wireless node) has very simple structure and can be deployed conveniently. Nowadays, many people setup their own private wireless ad-hoc networks based on the ZigBee standard to accomplish home automation, office automation, and wireless sensing, etc
When adding a new node to an existing wireless ad-hoc network, the most important step is the join process. Because data is transmitted between the nodes in a wireless manner, an unanticipated node may join the wireless ad-hoc network, or a node may join an unanticipated wireless ad-hoc network. As a result, private data may leak, and the bandwidth of the wireless ad-hoc network may taken up by unauthorized users.
In order to resolve the foregoing problem, a wired equivalent privacy (WEP) protocol has been developed for wireless devices based on the 802.11 standard, wherein unanticipated nodes are prevented from joining the network through authentication of WEP keys.
However, in the method mentioned above, each node requires an additional input interface to set the WEP key. Thus, this method is not suitable for ZigBee nodes which have simple structures. Thereby, a mechanism for resource constrained devices to prevent a node from mistakenly joining a wireless ad-hoc network is to be provided.